What have been your biggest surprises with this year's admission cycle?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised at how much weight essays and EC's played in the process. Did anyone have any huge surprises in admits or rejects so far?

How do you know essays and ECs played an unusually important role? Did people in admissions offices tell you this?

Just anecdotal - for example my kid got into a top 20 schools with grades and scores in the bottom quarter. She has no hooks - so the only thing that makes sense is would be the importance of essays and EC's.

You’re really not being useful with the thread…unless you can point to something specific, none of this is helpful. You continue to fish for something.

NP. I don’t understand the antagonism toward this poster. She’s just stating what she inferred.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised at how much weight essays and EC's played in the process. Did anyone have any huge surprises in admits or rejects so far?

You can’t know this.

To be the biggest surprise is that no one learned anything from the results in years cycle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised at how much weight essays and EC's played in the process. Did anyone have any huge surprises in admits or rejects so far?

How do you know essays and ECs played an unusually important role? Did people in admissions offices tell you this?

Just anecdotal - for example my kid got into a top 20 schools with grades and scores in the bottom quarter. She has no hooks - so the only thing that makes sense is would be the importance of essays and EC's.

You’re really not being useful with the thread…unless you can point to something specific, none of this is helpful. You continue to fish for something.

NP. I don’t understand the antagonism toward this poster. She’s just stating what she inferred.

Agreed- OP just sharing an observation, but people are taking things personally and responding in an unhelpful way rather than trying to have a dialogue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Being deferred and rejected by 2 targets

Though if it is a target, then rejection was at least 50% possible. The real surprise is when someone gets rejected by a safety. I wonder if that has happened (although if it has, the school probably wasn't a safety to begin with).

Getting rejected by a safety means the school figured out you are just using them as a safety, and have very little intent or realistic chance of attending.

If the school values demonstrated interest and/or rejects students who are academically qualified but seem unlikely to prefer to attend, then it isn't a safety.

However, not only is there nothing wrong with "using" a school as a safety. All students should have safeties on their list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have heard advice to apply early to a school that has rolling admission so as to get an early acceptance as a safety. I do wonder how these schools view such applications when it’s pretty obvious they are a safety.

Applying early to a rolling admission school is excellent (and not new) advice.

Schools are well aware that they may be safeties and many do not yield protect. EVERYONE needs to have safeties. Many schools are happy to accept such students because they have been able to calculate how many of them might attend, even if that % is low.

There are sophisticated algorithms telling the school how much merit to offer and how many they can offer merit to, what % are likely to enroll in such a way that they won't go over budget, even though the total merit offers exceed the budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised at how much weight essays and EC's played in the process. Did anyone have any huge surprises in admits or rejects so far?

How do you know essays and ECs played an unusually important role? Did people in admissions offices tell you this?

Just anecdotal - for example my kid got into a top 20 schools with grades and scores in the bottom quarter. She has no hooks - so the only thing that makes sense is would be the importance of essays and EC's.

or the admissions counselor at your school gave extra help

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised at how much weight essays and EC's played in the process. Did anyone have any huge surprises in admits or rejects so far?

How do you know essays and ECs played an unusually important role? Did people in admissions offices tell you this?

Just anecdotal - for example my kid got into a top 20 schools with grades and scores in the bottom quarter. She has no hooks - so the only thing that makes sense is would be the importance of essays and EC's.

or the admissions counselor at your school gave extra help

Nope - my kid goes to a public Fairfax County high school and the admissions counselor isn't too great. I think the problem is that there are too many kids needing his attention. So my kid did it on her own. She is a really good writer though and had some unique activities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised at how much weight essays and EC's played in the process. Did anyone have any huge surprises in admits or rejects so far?

How do you know essays and ECs played an unusually important role? Did people in admissions offices tell you this?

Just anecdotal - for example my kid got into a top 20 schools with grades and scores in the bottom quarter. She has no hooks - so the only thing that makes sense is would be the importance of essays and EC's.

Yes, that coupled with potential major (easier to get into Non-STEm/non-competitive major as it's simply a numbers game)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have heard advice to apply early to a school that has rolling admission so as to get an early acceptance as a safety. I do wonder how these schools view such applications when it’s pretty obvious they are a safety.

Applying early to a rolling admission school is excellent (and not new) advice.

Schools are well aware that they may be safeties and many do not yield protect. EVERYONE needs to have safeties. Many schools are happy to accept such students because they have been able to calculate how many of them might attend, even if that % is low.

There are sophisticated algorithms telling the school how much merit to offer and how many they can offer merit to, what % are likely to enroll in such a way that they won't go over budget, even though the total merit offers exceed the budget.

I would definitely recommend applying to a rolling admissions school where your child would be okay attending. My daughter did one rolling admissions school and got accepted in November and later on got admitted into its Honor's college and received strong merit - thus, making the school a pretty decent choice. Even though she has gotten into much higher ranked colleges since then, she is still considering the rolling admissions school. Also, if your child has one acceptance in hand, it just gives him/her a little bit of psychological relief (but the safety needs to be a school where he/she will at least be okay attending).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised at how much weight essays and EC's played in the process. Did anyone have any huge surprises in admits or rejects so far?

How do you know essays and ECs played an unusually important role? Did people in admissions offices tell you this?

Just anecdotal - for example my kid got into a top 20 schools with grades and scores in the bottom quarter. She has no hooks - so the only thing that makes sense is would be the importance of essays and EC's.

Yes, that coupled with potential major (easier to get into Non-STEm/non-competitive major as it's simply a numbers game)

That is very true! But for anyone thinking of trying to get into a school with an "easier" major, just know that it may backfire. Once your child gets in, it will be not be easy to change majors into one of the difficult ones (i.e. usually like engineering or comp sci).

[Anonymous]

Purely anecdotal and my personal opinion.

After lurking here for a few years and a lot of local gloom-and-doom from last year specifically, I’m surprised by the number of acceptances of DC and friends for this cycle. They kept the number of their applications < 10 (and most were even in the “handful” category of 5 or 6) and, so far, most seem to be getting “in” everywhere they’ve applied. Few applied to super reaches (I’m guessing self de-selection based on profile and/or pocketbook) but plenty of Top 20-50, including quite a few flagships both in- and OOS. Stress levels have already come way down, senioritis is setting in. All are excited to be “done” and, most of all, excited about where they are headed in the Fall.

Not sure what I can attribute their collective success to other than they’re all good students (4.0+ weighted with a good cross-section of AP/DE/IB) with very well-rounded resumes (sports, clubs, community service, church, and paid employment). Maybe half are URM, 1st Gen, low SES, or women interested in STEM, but the success rate cuts across all demographics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised at how much weight essays and EC's played in the process. Did anyone have any huge surprises in admits or rejects so far?

How do you know essays and ECs played an unusually important role? Did people in admissions offices tell you this?

Just anecdotal - for example my kid got into a top 20 schools with grades and scores in the bottom quarter. She has no hooks - so the only thing that makes sense is would be the importance of essays and EC's.

or the admissions counselor at your school gave extra help

Does this happen? Where CCO LOR makes that big of a difference??

[Anonymous]

How many people would rather go oos to a state school than go to a slac. That surprises me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How many people would rather go oos to a state school than go to a slac. That surprises me.

I think this is where economics comes into play with the cost of college tuition being out of control. So a lot of kids would rather go to an OOS state school where they are likely to get merit (or in the case of University of Florida where the tuition is comparable to in-state tuition for Virginia).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Purely anecdotal and my personal opinion.

After lurking here for a few years and a lot of local gloom-and-doom from last year specifically, I’m surprised by the number of acceptances of DC and friends for this cycle. They kept the number of their applications < 10 (and most were even in the “handful” category of 5 or 6) and, so far, most seem to be getting “in” everywhere they’ve applied. Few applied to super reaches (I’m guessing self de-selection based on profile and/or pocketbook) but plenty of Top 20-50, including quite a few flagships both in- and OOS. Stress levels have already come way down, senioritis is setting in. All are excited to be “done” and, most of all, excited about where they are headed in the Fall.

Not sure what I can attribute their collective success to other than they’re all good students (4.0+ weighted with a good cross-section of AP/DE/IB) with very well-rounded resumes (sports, clubs, community service, church, and paid employment). Maybe half are URM, 1st Gen, low SES, or women interested in STEM, but the success rate cuts across all demographics.

I have found the same to be true for my daughter this year. We applied to 12 places (originally planned to do 20 - until my daughter got sick of writing supplementals). She got into every school so far, but we are waiting on 3 more.